‘Not a vaccine against AIDS,’ said Steven.
‘No… that was just the team’s cover story… The Government wanted an agent that wouldn’t kill… but weaken and demoralise… infectious but not detectable… also had to be curable.’
‘And that’s what went into the vaccine?’ said Steven, trying to sound matter of fact but feeling shocked.
‘Yes…’ said D’Arcy. ‘But Crowe thought it wouldn’t be… a problem.’
‘Not a problem,’ Steven repeated, unable to stop himself as he thought about the war veterans. He wanted to ask D’Arcy where the hell he thought Gulf War Syndrome had come from, but from what Maclean had said about D’Arcy he suspected that the man would have accepted the official view of things without question.’
‘Did you continue working on this agent after the accident?’ he asked quietly.
D’Arcy gave a little shake of the head. ‘No, all work on it was stopped. I left Porton after that.’
‘The agent you were working on, it involved genetic engineering, didn’t it?’
A nod. ‘Yes.’
‘What did you do exactly?’
‘Tired…’ said D’Arcy. ‘Very tired…’
‘I know, Michael,’ said Steven. ‘Just tell me which genes were involved and then you can sleep.’
‘M…’
The nurse appeared as if by magic at Steven’s shoulder and said, ‘That’s enough. He has to rest and I think you know that.’
Steven accepted the rebuke. The nurse was right. He was a doctor and he knew very well. But by God, he had come so close to getting out of D’Arcy what he needed to know. He couldn’t resist the single expletive that whispered across his lips as he left the room to call Sci-Med to ask about arrangements for D’Arcy’s transfer.
‘We’ve been restricted by intensive care requirements,’ said the duty man. ‘The safe houses have been ruled out so Mr Macmillan’s arranged for private facilities in St Thomas’s Hospital without anyone being told who he is. When do you want him moved?’
‘Not my call,’ said Steven. ‘But I should think we’ll be given the okay around lunch time.’
‘We’ll send an ambulance and an escort?’
‘I’d like to keep things as low key as possible,’ said Steven. ‘Plain clothes armed escort, unmarked police cars.’
The surgeon who had operated on D’Arcy finished his examination and gave the all clear for the move just after eleven o’clock. He’d been assured by Steven that IC facilities would be available at the new location without his actually telling him where that would be. The man handed over D’Arcy’s case notes. ‘Can’t say I’m that sorry to be seeing the back of you all,’ he said, glancing at the armed policemen by the door.
‘Can’t say I blame you,’ said Steven. ‘Thanks for all you did for him.’
‘I still came second to a paperclip,’ smiled the surgeon. ’Good luck.’
D’Arcy was transferred to St Thomas’s Hospital in London without incident. Steven thought he would take the opportunity to go to the Home Office and speak with Macmillan while D’Arcy was settled in to his new environment and was still under sedation. First, he called Jane in Leicester to say that he wouldn’t be coming up after all. He told her what had happened.
‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘This is a nightmare. Are you still down in Kent?’
‘No, we didn’t think it was safe to leave him there. We’ve moved him as Mr Jones to a private room in St Thomas’s Hospital in London.’
‘Has he come round at all?’ asked Jane.
‘He was able to tell me quite a lot last night but not quite everything. I’m hoping to talk to him again after I’ve seen Macmillan.
‘But you managed to get an idea of what they were working on at Porton?’ said Jane.
‘The AIDS vaccine story was a cover,’ said Steven. ‘They were designing a new biological agent that would disable and demoralise rather than kill.’
‘Why?’
‘Social control I suppose,’ said Steven. ‘But that’s only half the story. A prototype version of it found its way into the troop vaccines by mistake. I gather George was to blame.’
‘God almighty,’ said Jane. ‘No wonder he was so alarmed about plans to use the old vaccines again.’
‘Quite,’ said Steven. ‘It seems that neither the government of the day nor the present one has any record of this ever happening. If they did they couldn’t possibly have considered using it again.’
‘But now you can tell them?’ said Jane.
‘I need D’Arcy to tell me more about the agent and how it was constructed. Part of their brief was to make it undetectable.’
‘What a world,’ said Jane. ‘No wonder George kept having nightmares. He deserved to!’
‘Don’t be too hard on him,’ said Steven. ‘People tend to accept anything that has official approval without question. George probably believed that he was just doing his job at the time. If every soldier was to stop and consider the implications of his actions every time an officer yelled, ‘Fire!’ we wouldn’t have an army. Most just pull the trigger and get on with their lives.’
‘I suppose,’ agreed Jane reluctantly. ‘Call me when you can.’
Macmillan was sitting at his desk, his head slightly to one side, fingers steepled under his chin and looking very worried when Steven entered. ‘How’s D’Arcy?’ he asked.
‘The medics think he’ll pull through. He suffered no ill effects from the transfer, which was my big worry. He should surface from the sedation in a couple of hours and I’ll be able to talk to him again.’
‘What a mess,’ sighed Macmillan. ‘What a bloody mess.’
‘You said you had some news?’ said Steven.
Macmillan looked at him thoughtfully and Steven saw in his eyes that he was in need of sleep.
‘After our last conversation I asked a friend in high places about special project teams at Porton,’ said Macmillan.
‘And now you wish you hadn’t?’
‘Something like that,’ said Macmillan. ‘You were right. It goes back a long way — to the days of the Second World War, in fact — when a group of scientists was asked to investigate the possibility of infecting cattle feed with anthrax. The idea was to drop it on German fields. They were called the Beta team and a special budget that by-passed the normal reporting and accounting procedures was assigned to it. In the end the stuff wasn’t used but the infrastructure supporting the team was never completely dismantled…’
Steven could see that there was more to come. ‘Go on,’ he said quietly.
‘My informant tells me that at some point in the eighties the Beta team appears to have been re-activated. Accounts were rendered for its support using the old procedures and paid without question.’
‘You mean Porton fancied a bit of extra money?’ said Steven.
‘Not quite that simple,’ said Macmillan. ‘Porton — in terms of its director and administrators — appears to have known nothing at all about it.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Steven.
‘My informant is continuing to pick away at it but it looks as if someone who knew about the existence of the Beta Team budget decided to recruit for it at Porton and have the team work on something the others knew nothing at all about.’
‘The agent D’Arcy told me about last night,’ said Steven. ‘Crowe’s team was the Beta Team of its day.’
Macmillan nodded. ‘Which raises several awkward questions…’
‘Not least, did the government know about this project at the time?’ said Steven. ‘Maybe they even instigated it?’
‘A can of worms on its own,’ said Macmillan.’
‘But it looks as if the accident at Porton was kept secret from them otherwise they wouldn’t have contemplated using up the old vaccine stocks,’ said Steven.